LANSING, Mich. Faced with the highest percentage of new coronavirus infections in the country, Michigan Government Gretchen Whitmer on Friday demanded a two-week suspension from personal high school classes, all sports for children and indoor restaurants.
She stopped ordering restrictions but asked for voluntary compliance to delay the distribution of Covid-19.
High schools should switch to virtual learning, both sports for children and non-schools should be discontinued, people should choose outdoor dining or take away instead of indoor seating, and they should avoid meeting with friends indoors, she said.
“We have to do it together. “Life depends on it,” Whitmer told a news conference, urging residents to be vaccinated. “We are going to have some more difficult weeks ahead. So I ask everyone – please take it seriously. ”
The Democratic governor also renewed her call on the federal government to send additional vaccinations. President Joe Biden’s administration will provide additional resources, but not doses.
About 40 percent of residents aged 16 and older received at least one vaccine shot, including 69 percent of those 65 and older. Chief medical officers from Michigan hospitals said vaccines are more than 99 percent effective in preventing disease, hospitalization and death. But they warned that variants are more contagious and deadly, bringing more young people to the hospital.
The state health department has strongly encouraged clues to encourage high schools that remain open to personal education to enroll in the rapid coronavirus testing program, which was recently mandatory for teenage athletes.
As of Thursday, Michigan has had the worst number of new Covid-19 cases in the U.S. in the past two weeks. Related hospitalizations more than quadrupled within a month and were 90 percent from the global peak of a year ago, leading to hospitals postponing non-emergency operations. The seven-day average of new daily deaths has been rising for two weeks.
“Because we see so many cases a day, our public health system is overwhelmed,” said Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, state medical chief, said. “We are not able to get information in many cases, nor can we identify their close contacts.”
The governor has opposed imposing restrictions on the past, such as a stay-at-home order or a ban on indoor dining, personal education and sports for youths criticized by Republican lawmakers. A mask requirement remains, as do the capacity constraints and caps on the size of the collection.
“It’s less than a policy issue we have, and more than a compliance and variant issue we face as a state,” she said.
But she did not rule out future restrictions and said nothing is off the table.
“At this point, we think it’s important for people to understand how serious this moment is,” she said.
Whitmer’s recommendation to temporarily close high schools has garnered mixed reaction in education circles.
The Michigan Education Association, the largest union for teachers in the state, has encouraged similar action for undergraduates, community colleges and universities. But the Great Lakes Education Project, a group with ties to the DeVos family, said children deserve “safe open classrooms”. Superintendents also appeared frustrated.
‘Educators have been committed to doing what is best for our students and social growth. We rely on health experts to guide us on the safest way to do this, and any shift or expectation that educators can make these decisions alone is not the right approach, ‘said Robert McCann, executive director of the K- 12 Alliance. of Michigan, a coalition of superintendents.
An industry group for restaurants, with a capacity of 50 percent, calls the governor’s recommendation ‘misleading’.
Republican lawmakers, who fought against restrictions, said they were encouraged she had not tightened them. Despite the upsurge, House Speaker Jason Wentworth said Whitmer should take up the remaining restrictions and “trust that the people of this state are doing the right thing for themselves and their families.”
The Michigan High School Athletics Association said it would complete the boys ‘and girls’ basketball tournaments on Friday and Saturday. The organization said that spring sports are all outdoors and that the spring season has the least contact sports.
“School districts will make local decisions on spring sports in the coming weeks based on local circumstances and circumstances,” Mark Uyl, executive director of MHSAA, wrote in a memorandum.
Covid-19 is linked to nearly 17,500 deaths in Michigan, including 26 added Friday. More than 577,000 people recovered by last week.